US stocks rose on Friday, September 25, with the Dow gaining 479 points and the S&P 500 climbing 0.5% to within 0.7% of its record, as oil fell on hopes of a Strait of Hormuz reopening. Stocks posted their first winning week in three even as 10-year Treasury yields held near their highest since 2007.
Akamai Technologies has signed an $11.6 billion, seven-year agreement to provide cloud infrastructure for Anthropic's CPU workloads, with the potential to grow to about $20 billion. Akamai shares surged as much as 15% on Friday before closing nearly 9% higher.
Supply chain company Prozo has opened a 30,000 sq ft fulfilment centre at Serampore in West Bengal, its third facility in the Kolkata network. Linked to Kolkata Port, NH-16, NH-19 and the Dankuni logistics hub, it will serve brands selling across West Bengal, Bihar, Jharkhand, Odisha and the north-east.
Imagine Learning, a US K-12 curriculum and learning technology company serving more than 18 million students, has opened a Bengaluru centre to build AI, engineering and product capabilities. It has already hired about 85 people in the city and expects to reach around 100 by the end of 2026.
Global advisory firm Keystone, whose clients include Microsoft, Meta, Amazon and Goldman Sachs, has launched Keystone India with Bengaluru as its first hub. It plans to expand its Indian workforce over the next two years and will use the office to support its global AI Centre of Excellence.
The Entrepreneurship Cell at IIT Kanpur has opened UpStart 2026, a national business model competition that puts screening and multi-week mentoring ahead of short pitches. Regional rounds run in Delhi, Bengaluru, Hyderabad and Mumbai before a finale at IIT Kanpur on January 23, 2027.
Helsinki-headquartered Aiven, which runs managed open-source data services such as Apache Kafka and PostgreSQL across major clouds, has launched India operations with a Bengaluru office. It plans to grow its 15-person local team as paying customers in Asia-Pacific rise nearly 90% a year.
Rapido has launched Ownly, its zero-commission food delivery app, in Hyderabad after Bengaluru. The platform has onboarded about 10,000 restaurants in the city at launch and aims for 30,000, betting that lower prices and its fleet of Captains can challenge Swiggy and Zomato.
IIM Bangalore has signed two agreements with the Ministry of Minority Affairs and the National Minorities Development & Finance Corporation. Its Centre for Public Policy will independently monitor 43 PM VIKAS training centres across five southern states, while NSRCEL will support entrepreneurship among minority communities.
Fidelitus GCC Nexus has appointed Dr Ankita Gupta as Chief Business Officer. With more than 18 years of experience across four global markets, she will work with companies in Europe, Germany and the Nordics to set up and scale Global Capability Centres in India.